Take five minutes and go see what Ira Glass of This American Life has to say about the creative process and storytelling.  Spot on!!

A few articles from across the world wide web on creativity & the creative process.  I've included the title of each article and the website where it lives...enjoy!

The Creative Process :: A List Apart website

 The Creative Process in Eight Stages :: The Huffington Post

How the Creative Process Works :: Creative Latitude 

The Creative Route to your Authentic Self :: Creativity Portal

Creating Soul Spaces :: Sunny Schlenger

...and a few from Creating Minds:

Blocks to Creativity

Creating a Creative Climate

Creative Workspaces

Culture and Creativity 

It can be difficult to stay close to our dearest friends when miles keep us physically distant, but there are a couple of lovely blogs between friends that remind me there are all kinds of fun ways to stay close.  Muse to Muse is a lovely exchange filled with fun links and creative musings.

3191:  A Year of Mornings was a project for 2007 between two friends who lived 3191 miles apart, and in 2008 they are going to be sharing A Year of Evenings starting January 15th.

Today's date is actually December 3, 2007, and last night was my first foray into professional teaching.  I have organized workshops, art groups, retreats and boutiques over the years, all with great success, and have been toying with the idea of making it an official piece of my career pie for many months.  In November of this year I decided to take the plunge, and last night I had a trial run workshop with seven fabulous women on my dining room table.  I provided a mountain of art supplies, a space to create and minimal instruction and they gave me invaluable feedback and insights into how these workshops might be structured for maximum creative impact.

I decided to write about my journey into teaching to offer readers a glimpse into the process of starting a creative business.  It is terribly easy to look at successful artists and enterpreneurs and think the journey must have been rosy and blissful from day one, when the reality is that any endeavor is a process that has moments of bliss, yes, but also challenges, frustrations and surprises.  I am barely 24 hours into this new adventure and I've already been given information that tells me my initial ideas might not be quite on the mark.  By the time last night's workshop was wrapping up, the path I thought I'd be on as a teacher already started shifting.

One of the greatest lessons I learned with Swirly is that there must be a balance between making something happen and allowing new directions to divert your attention.  I had a clear "big picture", long term vision for Swirly that always stayed intact, but in terms of the specifics of how I got there on a day to day basis, that shifted and morphed quite a bit as new opportunities arose along the way.  I have a vision for my teaching - and this blog and my artwork - that are all interconnected and part of the same picture, but I am well aware that the tactics I choose to assemble this puzzle might not be the best methods.  I have to be willing to explore other avenues and ideas as I receive input, advice and opinions from my potential audience.  It is a process I have learned to enjoy immensely.

The fear of being wrong is a powerful one indeed, and it prevents many people from putting their ideas, visions and creativity out in the world.  I actually find the possibility of being wrong positively freeing.  I explained to my group last night what my ideas were, and immediately followed that up with an admission that I might be totally wrong.  How wonderful!  I might be way off, and because of this there is absolutely no need to get attached to my ideas.  And guess what?  It looks like my ideas about making these workshops as accessible and effective as possible might not be the best.  Maybe not WRONG, but perhaps not as potent as they could be.  The exciting part of this is that it looks like I have been thinking too small, and I will serve myself - and my clients - better by thinking bigger.

I will be writing about this throughout the year, sharing the process with the goal of providing a realistic, inspring story of realizing a dream.  Accomplishing grand dreams are fabulous, of course, but it is all the steps we take to get to those moments of triumph that make the experience worthwhile.